The Top 5 Tips to Master Email Marketing

by Kevin

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Despite what you may have heard on social networking sites, email marketing is not dead. Sure, social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google +, etc.. provide a great platform to reach potential customers and prospects, but email marketing must be a part of your overall marketing strategy.

The first thing most people do in the morning is check their email, and it’s probably on their smartphone (hint: is your site mobile friendly?). Your email needs to stand out from the rest of the junk in their inbox for a chance that it might be read. how do you do this? Put the following 5 tips into action and reap the rewards.

1. Subject Line- This is where it starts. You have to capture your readers attention right here. Think of this as a compelling headline that you would write for an article or blog post. It must make the reader want to open the email to find out exactly what’s inside. Make sure the email content is congruent with the subject line though, if it’s not you will be marked as spam and never get opened by that reader again. Really put some time and effort into the subject line as it is the gateway for getting your email read.

2. Get to the Point and Give a Call to Action- Try and be as short and to the point as possible without sacrificing valuable content, unless a longer email fits in the context of you want to get across. Also, give a specific call to action for what you want the reader to do next. If you capture their attention correctly they will follow your call to action. Remember, a call to action does not always have to be: “click here and go buy this”. It could be to provide feedback, share an idea, or put a helpful tip into action for their own benefit.

3. Provide Value- Don’t just think of what you want out of the correspondence, think about what problems your reader is facing and how you can help them. Strive for a win-win scenario in the email relationship you develop with your reader and an avalanche of benefits will be on your way. A good auto-responder sequence will look to provide value and build the know, like, and trust factor and only “sell” occasionally. Giving stuff away for free is a great way to help form this relationship, but you must be able to solve your readers problems whatever they may be.

4. Who it’s From- By doing #3 and providing value you will begin building your personal brand. Capitalize on the know, like, and trust factor by using your own name as the sender. The only thing your reader will see when they open their inbox is the sender name and the subject line. If they know your name, like and trust what you have to say, then you will have a much easier time getting the reader to action your call to action. Also, craft your email as if you are talking directly to that person. Use their first name in the email copy and sign your first name at the bottom.

5. Auto-responder- Please make sure to use a reputable auto-responder company that has a great deliverability reputation. You want your email to end up in the inbox and not the spam folder. I use Aweber (*this is an affiliate link*) for this exact reason as do most of the online marketers out there. In addition, make sure there is a clear unsubscribe link and use the confirmed opt-in feature to make sure you are only sending emails to people who actually want them. iContact and MailChimp are other reputable auto-responder companies too.

There you have it. This is just the tip of the iceberg with email marketing, but if you can get these 5 tips down, you will be a master in the making! Sign up for my email list below and see how I structure things in my email marketing. There’s my call to action

The thing about email is that even though lots of people complain about getting too much of it, they still read emails from people that they want to hear from. And this great article tells us how to be the person that the readers want to hear from. Social media does have its place in an overall marketing strategy, but it isn’t the only place.

Lots of people prefer to read emails rather than read something online on the page, but the truth is we are not going to hear about that on a social media site (more than likely). A marketing campaign needs to cover various ways of communicating with people and email is a great way to do that. Thank you Kevin for a well written and very timely post.